Georgette Braun: Catching up with 'gold-standard' lawyer Dan Cain

Dan Cain. You know that name if you know of someone who’s been in really big trouble with the law. Cain, who turns 65 on Thursday and is semi-retiring, sets the “gold standard” as far as criminal defense lawyering goes.

You know that name if you know of someone who’s been in really big trouble with the law.

Cain, who turns 65 on Thursday and is semi-retiring, sets the “gold standard” as far as criminal defense lawyering goes.

“Dan is a person who does not draw attention to himself, but when he is in a room, you give deference to him,” Glenn Schorsch, chief public defender in Stephenson County, told me.

I can attest to that. Years ago, a colleague and I would occasionally stop after work for a beer at CJ’s. On a few occasions when we were there, Cain would drop in for a drink, and his presence was noted by customers. “That’s Dan Cain,” they’d whisper to anyone they thought might not know him.

“He is a guy who has a reputation for helping a lot of people in trouble, some high-profile,” said Maggie Crisman, an interior designer who tended bar at CJ’s for 15 years. “When people would ask advice, he was never dismissive. He was always gracious.” He’d tell people to stop in to see him in the next few days, and if he couldn’t help them, he’d refer them to a pal.

One of Cain’s high-profile cases was Jim Heaslip. Heaslip could have been convicted of first- or second-degree murder in the death of his wife, Mary; he was found guilty in 1996 of involuntary manslaughter. She suffocated when he sat on top of her; he also slapped and punched her. Heaslip was sentenced to four years in prison, with credit for time served. Petitions had been collected asking for a tough sentence.

Heaslip thanked Cain just before he was escorted from the courtroom by guards.

Cain makes an impression as a result of hard work.

“He is impeccably prepared (and) has a lot of sincerity when he handles cases in front of a jury,” Judge Fernando Engelsma told me.

Engelsma presided in July in a Winnebago County courtroom in the murder trial of Isaac Jaimes, 20, whom a jury found not guilty in the shooting of DeMarkis Robinson, 16. The acquittal occurred despite Jaimes’ taped confession. Cain was Jaimes’ attorney, as was Debra Schafer, his partner at Sreenan & Cain, and argued that Jaimes was wrongly coerced into confessing.

Schafer said Cain’s success also is tied to his ability to anticipate questions from the prosecution and to identify flaws in a case.

Cain is originally from Chicago and came here to work as an assistant state’s attorney in Winnebago County. He doesn’t ask a client whether he or she “did it. You ask your client aspects of what occurred, and then you decide what should be done.”

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He likes being a defense attorney. “You are dealing with people who really need some help, and you use the best evidence to help them, and you’re making an impact on their lives.”

Cain, who carries silver dollars in his pockets and often rubs them between his fingers, said he has tried about 150 jury cases in his 35-year career and has won a “good percentage.”

He also used to win a lot of $20 bets in the mid- to late 1970s, he says. Other lawyers would challenge him at a long-closed downtown bar to a foot race. He’d take off his shoes and run in his socks, always for 60 yards. That was the deal. Cain also used to ride his Honda motorcycle across country with friends, sometimes on 10-day trips.

He plans to spend more time in Florida with his wife, Diane, a book designer. They have no children. But he will continue with a few cases he has on the books and will be around many days to help Schafer and Christopher DeRango, another partner in the law firm. Pat Sreenan, whom Cain started working with in 1978, is no longer alive. The firm employs seven lawyers and 17 support staff.

“It’s not to say I will not try another case,” Cain said of his “senior/emeritus status” with his firm.

Schorsch said word was out last year that Cain would wind down his practice, and he has penned a parody “swan song” for Cain. It was performed at the 2012 Legal Follies by attorney Jocelyn Koch to Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain.” Its title: “You’re Dan Cain” because it rhymed, not because Cain is vain.

I was there, playing a bit part as a reporter, and the parody was a hoot. I remember the audience laughing at lyrics that included “I know some cops who keep you on their speed dial, you on their speed dial.”

In all seriousness, though, Cain is defending former Rockford Police Department officer Oda Poole in an administrative hearing. Poole was relieved of his duties after he and another officer shot and killed Mark Barmore in 2009 in a Rockford church.

A psychologist for the Police Department said Poole was unfit for his job, but a psychologist for the police union said otherwise. Cain said Poole wants back on the force.

Other lyrics with threads of truth: “Well, you win the big trials all the time, and when you’re out, you’re with some underworld spy.”

Schorsch told me a week ago that the “underworld spy” part isn’t so much true as it is a “plausible fabrication.”